Work-Life-Balance

 

1963

I hadn't even started shaving yet but I was already in charge of the mobile office that followed the crew that built the Autobahn from Hannover to Bremen. 'Work-life-balance' meant that I worked at the desk in the front and slept in the bunk at the back.

 

You hear it all the time now; politician talk about it, it's on the telly and in the newspapers, and they even run workshops about it: the dreaded 'work-life-balance'. It sounds as though it's something we must have. If we don't have it, we're doomed.

A few decades ago, we wouldn't have known what they're talking about. Yes, we might have said that we preferred to spend a bit more time on the beach or at the pub, or even with our families, but as for life, our work was so much part of it that it made no sense to talk of it as something separate.

 

1982 Yours truly in his Port Moresby office

 

Work didn't cut against the grain of life; it was naturally integrated with it. We were lucky enough to feel that our work was part of our lives.

 

1982/83

My office on the top floor of the Al Bank Al Saudi Al Fransi building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

 

I was one of those lucky ones. On reflection, my work-life-balance was appalling, but that was my choice. I might've been called a workaholic, but the truth was that work was as much a part of my life as leisure.

 

1984/85

In my office in Piraeus in Greece, tracking my Saudi boss's commodity shipments

 

I lived to work, and I worked to live, and I had a great time doing both.

 

From 1986

Self-employed as "Canberra Computer Accounting Systems" in my home office in Canberra.
I had come full circle: I slept in the room next door.

 

Thanks for the memories!

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